A site currently promoting awareness and debate of how the poorest students in Scotland face the highest government debts: "seems to return to this issue again and again…. " Michael Russell, former Cabinet Secretary for Education, April 2014

Institute of Fiscal Studies: more resources for researchers

July 1, 2013

This IFS site is a useful resource for anyone interested in student financing. It focuses on understanding changes which have applied in England. The IFS study discussed elsewhere this blog is one product of this project. But there is other useful material, including here, an analysis that concludes that for the 27% of lowest earning graduates, the system will mean lower repayments than the previous system in England, due to changes in the loan threshold and eventual write-off meaning much debt is not repaid, while the highest earning graduates will pay back more (due to the higher initial borrowing required) and indeed more than they borrowed (due to real terms interest). The new English system is in effect working more like a progressive graduate tax than its predecessor.